Friday’s Headlines: Gateway Tunnel Funding Edition

Thursday's big news was a multi-billion dollar tranche of funding for the much ballyhooed Gateway Tunnel under the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey.

New York's own Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced the news at a press conference — that the Federal Transit Administration had given the go-ahead to begin the "engineering phase" of the project, which is the long-awaited spiritual successor to the (much cheaper) ARC tunnel killed after construction had already begun in 2010 by then-N.J. Gov. Chris Christie.

Gateway on Thursday officially received the largest single transportation grant in American history, Schumer revealed to the Times — $6.8 billion, which will cover 40 percent of the expected cost of the $17.2-billion train tunnel. The existing tunnel is 113 years old; Gateway is expected to be completed in 2035.

The size of the new grant raises the question of how much more federal money is left to fund New York-based transportation projects. The MTA has already received funding for the Second Avenue Subway, which also moved forward this week. Other priorities such as Penn Station may wind up on the wrong side of the ledger.

Other outlets who covered the Gateway news included Bloomberg, Reuters, and CNN — as well as the usual local suspects. (Gothamist, Daily News, NY Post, NY1)

In other news:

• Syracuse's I-81 teardown still hasn't happened, as Streetsblog readers know. (NYS Focus)
• Hudson Valley cranks also don't want to pay MTA congestion tolls. (Hudson Valley Post)
• An allegedly intoxicated 24-year-old in a Mercedes killed an on-duty city employee and injured his co-worker early Thursday morning in Queens. (NY Post, WPIX, QNS, ABC7NY)
• Cars are a horrible — but for many Americans, they're an inescapable burden. (Vox)
• More renderings of the next phase of the Second Avenue Subway. (NY1, Urbanize, Crain's)

Thursday was a quiet day for the mainstream media, but not for Streetsblog. Check out:

• Our coverage of the latest lawsuit against the city's outdoor dining program.
• Our coverage of the city's new policy of snatching up bikes left on bike racks for more than a week.
• We also covered the lawsuit by tech giants to deny delivery workers a decent living wage. (Though the Post, the Times and the Wall Street Journal also covered.)
• And finally, Jesse Coburn's scoop that Mayor Adams has ordered DOT back to the drawing board on McGuinness Boulevard. Only Greenpointers followed the exclusive, which is a shame, because as our editor points out today, the mayor's flip-flop on a DOT safety project is a terrible thing on many levels. The City had more details.

Speaking of McGuinness, supporters of the bike lane are not happy the mayor is reneging on the plan two years in the making. Transportation Alternatives will rally in front of the headquarters of Broadway Stages at 6 p.m. on Friday and the local Assembly member was peeved: